Demand response (DR) refers to programs used to encourage/induce utility consumers to curtail or shift their demand of electricity at particular times in order to reduce aggregate utility demand. For example, electric utilities may employ demand response resources to reduce peak demand for electricity. Demand response programs typically offer customers economic incentives for agreeing to reduce their demand at certain times.
Utilities may also consider use of energy storage resources to increase the amount of electricity supplied during a period of peak demand. It is believed that to date, utilities generally use non-integrated (e.g., ad hoc) approaches regarding when to invoke a DR event versus when to invoke an energy storage event to co-optimally meet a desired load reduction. It will be appreciated that such approaches do not provide the utilities with a control strategy, which would be conducive to cost-effective co-utilization of DR and/or storage resources so that a utility's economic gains, savings, and/or other criteria may be co-optimized. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide further improvements regarding strategies for the utilization of DR and storage resources.